Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Revolution This Time

President Obama’s muffled response to the revolution in Iran -- and it is a revolution – is due to his perception that Iran might possibly use strong statements supporting those who resist oppression in that country, mostly Western oriented young people and intellectuals, to effect its own purposes: He does not wish, by imprudent statements, to allow the United States to become “a foil” used by oppressors to snuff out the resistance.

There is a serious objection to this diplomatic nonsense: The oppressors in Iran – and they are oppressors – will seize on any pretext to accomplish their purposes. Even Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon’s mild retorts, paralleling those of Obama, have been used by the oppressor regime to suppress the revolution. To the oppressors in Iran, all words are fighting words. All words are foils.

Obama’s excessive caution is a double-edged sword. It is also used by the oppressor regime as a permission to commit violence on the resistance.

When a victorious Janos Kadar said, following the suppression of the Hungarian revolt in 1957, that there could be no counterrevolution in Hungary, Albert Camus, the apostle of liberty in France at the time, replied that Kadar was right – because his was the counterrevolution, a betrayal of the liberty of Hungarians.

We need clear voices like this in the White House. The revolution in Iran, were it to succeed, would secure the promise of the more democratic Iran that was betrayed by Amidinajad and his overlords in Iran. That was the counterrevolution. This is the revolution.